Olympic Nostalgia:Tennis Player Monica Seles

In honor of the upcoming summer games, we caught up with eight former U.S. Olympic champions. In this series, they share their fondest memories of everything it took to win the gold.

In any tournament I enter, I want to win. But, at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, I wasn’t putting as much emphasis on winning. I thought of the games as a chance to be among other great athletes. Tennis is such an individual sport. So it was very cool to be in the Olympic village—to see how athletes are training, what they’re eating. Dara Torres—she was in awesome shape. I asked her, “How do you do it?” I met people who became superstars.

We had a wonderful women’s tennis team: Venus Williams, Lindsay Davenport, and me (and Serena Williams won the gold in doubles with her sister). Even though we were competitors, everyone was supportive of each other in Sydney.

At the 1996 Atlanta games, I’d lost in the quarterfinals to the Czech Republic’s Jana Novotna. It was tough—my friends and family had all come to watch me play. Sydney was a different story; I won the bronze. Venus beat me in the semifinals, and I had to come back and fight Jelena Dokic for third place. She’s Australian and we were playing in her country, so it was hard. But I did it.

After that, I was free to enjoy the games. There were two sports I wanted to see: swimming and track. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of my all-time favorites and I had trained with her husband, Bob Kersee (my dad was a triple jumper when he was young). I got to watch the 100 meters and some men’s and women’s swimming events. I knew it would probably be my last Olympics, but I was just so happy to have experienced them.